New York City has over 500 miles of shoreline waterfront. Recently however, urban neighborhoods, residents, visitors, commerce, and industry have been disconnected from it. The Red Hook Water Research Incubator, an idea proposed by architectural designer Aaron Berman, aims to reverse that disconnect, while revitalizing the Brooklyn Waterfront as a productive edge for both research and recreation.

The Red Hook Water Research Incubator entices potential occupants by providing the highest level of variance in water testing conditions, with the least amount of hydrological impact. By studying variables such as water depth, transparency, salinity, turbulence, and public and private programmatic zones, a potential company can pick out the specific testing pool that best suits their particular research field, and plug-in to one of the modular labs to set up a temporary research program.

Additionally, because the incubator would be located just south of the Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Research pier would be seen as an extension of the popular park, letting the public program continue into the water. Through a series of layering and adjacency studies, public program is laid out onto the pier based on the specific relationships to the water research zones, which include, but are not limited to, aquaponics, hydroponics, desalination, hydroelectric power, and fish farming.